My friend posted on her Facebook page:

“Meeting people where they are in life makes for a sweet journey. Trying to meet them where I think they should be… not so much.”

I love this friend.

Life is really all about relationships. We can pick and choose “perfect” relationships with friends and family (yes, you can choose to have familial relationships or not), but you may look around to find that your scope of friends/family is quite small. Perfect relationships just don’t happen along all that often.

Steven Curtis Chapman happens to have a song playing on the airwaves these days that says, “You were meant to be touching the lives you have touched, and meant to be here making this world so much more than it would be without you in it.”

Just ponder on that thought for a moment. If life is all about the relationships in our lives (It is), and if God is indeed sovereign (He is), then perhaps we need to stop sometimes and consider the people we cross paths with on a regular basis.

We may scratch our heads and wonder just why a certain person keeps popping up in our lives. We might just as well prefer they didn’t. Some people take a great deal of effort, don’t they? Don’t we much prefer to hang out with those few people that make life easy and enjoyable? I do. I really do.

It’s true that we must keep closest people who encourage us in the faith, who hold us accountable for our walk with Christ and who are themselves spiritually healthy. This is a lesson I have tried so very hard to ingrain in my kids. It is my sincere hope that when they are asked what was it that their momma taught them, in addition to “Always wear clean underwear”, I hope they will say, “Mom always said that my closest relationships need to be with spiritually healthy people.”

I teach that to my kids for a particular reason, and it’s not because I want them to limit their friendships to only those who are spiritually healthy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Instead, I am all about my kids reaching out to their friends that need a relationship with Jesus. But this is only successful if they have folks to help keep them from straying from the path of righteousness.

It has been said that if you lay down with dogs you’ll get up with fleas. Only Jesus was able to walk with the ungodly and come away unstained. Good friends in the faith can help you pick off the fleas.

Even Jesus had close friends in the faith. Out of his twelve disciples, he kept a few closest. Not to keep him on the straight and narrow, after all, he is the very definition of straight and narrow, but to set the example for us to follow.

I am thankful for the people who have met me at different times on my spiritual journey. They have taken me down the road, walked with me and taught me how to love more, give more, and seek more than just a passing fancy with my Savior.

Had they tired of me because I was not where they thought I should be spiritually, I would not be where I am today. And where’s that? Still in need of blessed friends to walk with me on this journey.

Look around you. You are meant to be touching the lives that you are touching. You may think it is all for nothing, but it’s not. Just make sure that you are surrounding yourself with great friends in the faith. They are essential, and totally a blessing from the Lord.

To all my friends who walk this road of faith with me, thanks for making this journey so wonderful.